Riven's been crushing it ever since she discovered Axiom Arc. We like that she's swift and lethal in the early game but ultimately she's bursting down her competition too quickly once mid game arrives. Additionally, with all the extra gold and experience in the game right now, players have cited that late game fights resolve too quickly. So, all that considered, we're here to take out some of her late game burst power.

Riven's native mobility, strong dueling, and interesting risk profile of having to burn damage in order to close the gap could make for a really compelling jungle champion. She's also monstrously hard to play, but even accounting for that, she appears to be a pretty abysmal jungler at her current tuning. We're substantially buffing her first clear to see if players will find a fun, dynamic, high-skill fighter compelling in this new role.

Riven is one of the best light fighters, particularly in skilled play. While it's important to us that deeply invested players are rewarded for their mastery, she's currently bursting a little too hard in the right hands, so we're giving her a little tap down. And before you ask, this isn't because of the Teemo clip, although we aren't surprised to see how many of you loved watching Teemo get popped.

Riven is performing a bit too well, particularly in high skill brackets. Her level nine, Eclipse power spike gained a meaningful amount of damage with the 14.20 buff that we'd like to retain, but now it will come as a tradeoff to her early vulnerability through E.

Riven was strongly bound to Eclipse, which was one of the most-nerfed items last patch. While we’re happy with the item changes overall we need to re-assess champions who are still using these items. We want Riven to feel comfortable stacking damage, so we’re giving her better Q damage as long as she keeps building long swords. The math here works out to a stronger level 9 spike and an overall higher appetite for bonus AD. We also dug into her recommended rune pages, which are driven by player choices, and found that there are some significantly stronger options available, so we manually replaced a few. This should make her Resolve page much more competitive with her Sorcery one.

The anti-snowballing update of 13.20 hurt Riven a bit as she's often reliant on snowballing an early lead. While she's not strictly weak in the hands of her most practiced players, we'd like to give her a small boost in power to make that dedication pay off a little harder.

Riven is intended to be a very high mastery champion and we don’t think her current state is supporting a type of play that allows her to masterfully snowball her leads into wins. We’re getting rid of her atypical passive scaling to make it more early-skewed and less spikey, while letting her passive do a little extra damage to towers so she can be a more powerful side lane threat.

Riven was hit unusually hard by the Goredrinker nerfs and was particularly weak in patch 11.21, especially in Average play. Even with the small buffs to Goredrinker this patch, Riven still needs a bit of love, so we're redeeming her damage and shield.

Riven’s a champion who can block, dock, and knock up enemies at will, leaving enemies both wounded in their health bars and egos. This means she is especially strong in Skilled and Elite play, where on-demand shields are more readily used and capitalized on. By lowering some of her ability to mitigate damage, she’ll need to be more careful before dashing into her next battle.

The new season put Riven in a weak spot, and with high cooldowns on her E, she's lost her mojo. Since both of her hardbound items (Goredrinker/Ravenous Hydra) are getting substantial nerfs this patch, we're looking to reforge her spirit.